Were Bows invented independently in the New World?

I’ve done some minor research on this, and it seems as though the bow and arrow is thought to have arrived from Siberia about 3000 BCE, but there is some evidence to the contrary. Well, the question is, what do you guys think?
 
The bow is present in almost every culture around the world, so I would assume it existed at the very least. Note also that the Spanish brought crossbows with them, which do not seem to have been adopted elsewhere in the New World.
 
There is some evidence that the bow came from Africa. Arow heads have been discovered in South Africa that are over 60 thousand years old.
 
The bow is present in almost every culture around the world, so I would assume it existed at the very least. Note also that the Spanish brought crossbows with them, which do not seem to have been adopted elsewhere in the New World.

There were Inuit hunting crossbows.
 
There is some evidence that the bow came from Africa. Arow heads have been discovered in South Africa that are over 60 thousand years old.

I’m not sure if I’m reading this correctly...are you suggesting that the bow came out of Africa when humans did?
 
I’ve done some minor research on this, and it seems as though the bow and arrow is thought to have arrived from Siberia about 3000 BCE, but there is some evidence to the contrary. Well, the question is, what do you guys think?

In the Americas, the bow and arrow became more widespread over time. There were Amerindian cultures still adopting the bow full-time after 0 AD/CE, and many of them used spear-throwers up until then, possibly even slings. The point at which the bow and arrow became generally universally spread across North America, for example, was around 500 AD. At the latest.

Bowmaking in the Americas got as far as composite bows of wood and horn, similar to many Asian bows, but these were rarer due to the material expenses. Plains cultures and a few of the western cultures had composite bow manufacturing, to varying extent. Most native bows throughout the Americas were wooden self-bows or composite bows with a reinforced sinew back.

Some additional info that you might find interesting:




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As Rath has mentioned, the Inuit did have some simple crossbows, though we are really unsure whether they invented them on their own or if it was a trickle-down bit of knowledge via traders trading as far as Kamchatka, Siberia and east Asia. Some Kamchatka, Bering Sea and Aleutian nationalities got ahold of mail armour, usually mail shirts, via trade with Asia, so who knows whether the crossbow idea didn't accidentally come all the way from China or Korea. Very hard to say at this point, as the Inuit obviously didn't keep such records, as smart and advanced a people they were. It might have been an entirely independent invention, but would be remarkably similar to some other all-wooden crossbows from elsewhere in Eurasia and Africa. There is no archaeological evidence that Native Americans to the south of the Inuit ever invented or knew of crossbows before the Spanish arrived, but we've had a discussion on the viability of their independent invention last summer.
 
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I’m not sure if I’m reading this correctly...are you suggesting that the bow came out of Africa when humans did?
It is not absolutely conclusive that the arrowhead found in Africa were used in bows. There are a number of ways you can Shoot an arrow . However, it's the similarity of size and shape to later arrows that were used in bows that would suggest they were. The actual bows are a rare find. But some have been found in peat bogs. One of the oldest was found in New Zeland and has been dated to around ten thousand years old. There have been some found in northern Europ of a similar age. It would seem once Humans started using flint, knives and attacheding them to the end of a piece of wood soon followed.
 
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I worked on an archeology team in Pennsylvania one summer. The archeologist leading the team told me that bows became common in North America around 1000AD. The vast majority of stone 'arrowheads' people find are actually spear points.
 
My understanding is that the bow was introduced by the Paleo-Eskimo/Na-Dene migration into North America. It did however, like some posts have already said, take a while to be widely adopted by the Native Americans.
 
The actual bows are a rare find. But some have been found in peat bogs. One of the oldest was found in New Zeland and has been dated to around ten thousand years old.
That's extremely impressive given that humans have been in New Zealand for less than a thousand years. And that bows were used in New Zealand little if at all at the time of European contact.
 
That's extremely impressive given that humans have been in New Zealand for less than a thousand years. And that bows were used in New Zealand little if at all at the time of European contact.
I have never heard of any Polynesians using bows at all and I definitely know that the Maori never used them. I think the oldest definitive bow was found in Zealand, as in Denmark.
 
The bow is present in almost every culture around the world, so I would assume it existed at the very least. Note also that the Spanish brought crossbows with them, which do not seem to have been adopted elsewhere in the New World.
Bows and arrows are also common among the highly isolated Jarawa on North Sentinel Island and Amzonian Rain Forest tribes. But it never seems to have found its way to Australia...?
 
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I worked on an archeology team in Pennsylvania one summer. The archeologist leading the team told me that bows became common in North America around 1000AD. The vast majority of stone 'arrowheads' people find are actually spear points.
Didn´t some of the Mezoamerican high cultures had an ege over their enemies because of using archery ?
 
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Didn´t some of the Mezoamerican high cultures had an ege over their enemies because of using archery ?
Not that I'm aware of, bows didn't start appearing in Mesoamerica until the Terminal Classic at the earliest and I can't recall any instances of archery giving them a decisive edge over anybody. In fact I think it was the nomads to the north of Central Mexico who spread its use southward.
 

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If the bow was indeed brought over by when they crossed the Bering Strait, did they already have recurve bows at that point or were those invented later?
 
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